


What Are You Good At?

by Skinandpit



Category: Bakuten Shoot Beyblade, Beyblade
Genre: Depersonalization, Depression, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 23:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11588034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skinandpit/pseuds/Skinandpit
Summary: It's been years since the Bladebreakers broke up, and the reporters aren't interested in Kai anymore. No one is interested in Kai, really - he lives on his own with a cat named Ragamuffin, visits his dying grandfather in the hospital every Wednesday, and hasn't spoken in months. Life looks like it's going to carry on this way indefinitely until Ray makes an unexpected return. (Illustrated)





	What Are You Good At?

**Author's Note:**

> Please note the tags for trigger warnings, and feel free to message me at opossumghost.tumblr.com if you want a more detailed (spoilery) description.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I made an error and decided to illustrate this _after_ already posting this. Images will be uploaded and settled in their proper places by chapter two.

 

The reporters aren’t interested in him anymore — haven’t been for years — which isn’t as much of a relief as he thought it would be. He sort of wishes someone would ask him how it felt to win against the world-renowned American team, or how many pies Tyson could pack down in a single sitting, or whatever, because the fact is that the Bladebreakers are still the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

He slips in through the side entrance of his apartment, the one which lies flush against the garbage bins and always smells like rotting pears. Sometimes there are stray cats hanging around, but he doesn’t feed them. They can eat from the bins if they want, and anyway he never remembers to bring meat with him.

Cats need taurine, they can’t make it in their bodies, you can’t feed them carrots or celery or certain low-quality brands. He has a manual. The humane society gave it to him when he adopted his own cat. He reads it over every so often, just to make sure he’s getting everything right.

There’s a guy hanging around the hallway, smoking a cigarette. He’s skinny, a jittery bony kind of skinny, and he has black makeup smeared around his eyes. Kai knows him, sort of. He’s seen him dragging furniture into room 408, down the hall from his own apartment. He takes them from beside the industrial garbage bins, where people leave their old things out for the trash collectors.

The guy waves at him and Kai ducks his head as he passes by. Thinks, that asshole owns my lamp.

It’s not until he’s actually inside his apartment, with his cat Ragamuffin swatting at his legs for food, that he remembers he’s supposed to wave back.

It doesn’t really matter.

He cuts his hair in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the sink with a pair of ordinary scissors and a hand mirror. Ragamuffin paces the length of the room, stopping every now and again to swat at stray strands.

He turns the mirror to examine his handiwork. It’s okay. It sticks up a little beside his left ear, which would have bothered him a lot a couple years ago. It’s blond now, back to its natural colour. He hasn’t dyed it for a while now, but he’s thinking maybe he’ll buy something cheap from the supermarket. He’s pretty good at dying hair. He has a good sense for how long it takes the bleach to sink in, the dye to stet.

Maybe after Grandfather dies.

He frowns, tilting his head to try and cut the back into interesting chunks.

He feels sad for some reason, and he doesn’t know why.

xx

He checks his phone for missed messages, compulsively. He reads the newspaper at the kitchen table every morning, even though he can’t remember the contents when he’s done. Time seems to be moving sideways.

He’s waiting.

He’s always waiting.

It’s his job, now. Keep the phone on. Feed the cat. Show up during visiting hours on Wednesdays and pretend not to notice the way the nurses look at him when he sits on the chair beside Grandfather’s bed, screwing around with Candy Crush until he needs to adjust a pillow or fetch a glass of water. They think he’s a bad kid, the last family member left, and he doesn’t care about this dying old man who isn’t going to see next year’s snowfall.

On the first Wednesday of December, he brings flowers, just to make them think he’s making an effort. They’re yellow as police tape.

Grandfather is lying flat on his back where the nurses put him, too sick to get up. There aren’t any wrinkles in his blankets. The room smells chemical, sugar-sweet.

He grunts when he sees the flowers. “Cut the stems.”

They were already cut in a case when Kai bought them in the gift shop. He takes them out, pulls the jackknife out of his pocket, and cuts them again anyway. It makes a sharper angle. Who knows — maybe they’ll collect more water this way.

“Better.”

There’s something in the way Grandfather is looking at him — an edge which makes all the muscles in Kai’s shoulders tense.

“The boy is in the paper. Your old friend.”

His voice is so much thinner than it used to be.

“Listen to me.”

Kai looks up. Grandfather’s head is sunk into the pillow. He points with his eyes — there’s a paper lying on the table beside him, the same one Kai read this morning but barely remembers.

“Came to something,” Grandfather says, and coughs.

They all did. Kai knows this. He sees Ray on TV sometimes, talking in his clear, serious voice about how they have to save the wilderness. He sees the Beyblade shop which Max and Kenny operate together. Tyson, who knows what happened to Tyson, he probably inherited the dojo from his grandpa. Kai stayed their for a while once and Tyson never made him explain why.

And then there’s him. Never done anything since. Couldn’t find a single leftover skill.

Used it all up in a children’s game.

He looks at the clock. He watches as the hands tick. Grandfather stares at nothing in the distance. When the hands hit nine, Kai gets up and leaves.

At home, he looks through the newspaper for the article. It’s buried way in the back. Ray’s coming here, it says. He’s doing a talk about the environment at a local high school. There’s a picture of him holding a tame hawk on his fist in a school gymnasium, the same standard-issue basketball net that’s in ever high school in the world behind him, and then a little blurb about him having once been in a nationally recognized team from this very town — as if Ray belonged to them, somehow.

He folds the paper up and puts it carefully in the recycling bin.

He checks his phone. He cooks chicken hearts on the stove, oil spitting at his arms, pours half into Ragamuffin’s bowl and then eats the other half with the disposable chopsticks he’s washed until they’re bone dry.

It’s a life.

It’s a _life._

Not everyone gets to be something twice. He already used up all the parts of himself that matter. It’s okay. It’s fine. He’s fine.

xx

At ten, his phone rings.

He doesn’t know the number, but when he picks it up, there’s Ray’s voice coming out of the speaker.


End file.
